What if I told you I could show you the past? Or show you beauty you have never seen before? Or even how to fly? All sounds very impossible right? On land yes that would be right however, in the scuba diving world this is happening daily to thousands of divers. So, whether you have only recently thought about diving, or this has been on your mind for some time, let me give you 7 reasons why scuba diving is fun and why you should go for it.
Table of Contents
7 Reasons Why You Should Try Scuba Diving
Travel
Scuba diving enriches your travels as you’re no longer limited to exploring the land, but you can now explore under the water too. One of the main reasons why scuba diving is fun is that lots of the touristy travel destinations often have some remarkable underwater attractions. Having just achieved your diving certification, this is a great place to start. So, if you’re on holiday with family or friends, you can just sneak away for a dive or two.
Diving has a massive presence all over the globe meaning if you want to dive in particular waters, you can. If you want to dive warm waters, needing only shorts and a T-shirt, you can head to the Caribbean, Red Sea or even Australia on the Great Barrier reef. Alternatively, you can jump into the icy waters in the arctic or Iceland in pristine clear “gin” waters, swimming between the tectonic plates that splits the North Atlantic Ocean. The diversity of topography and species at all diving destinations throughout the world is enormous so no dive will ever be the same. You’ll see new spots you have missed before or new fish you hadn’t realised were right in front of you.
What you find with divers is that they often don’t realise the diving opportunities that are around them. As for the most part we all don’t live on a beautiful sandy beach with warm water and vast corals diverse with life. I wish!! So, as you develop as a diver and you get the urge to go diving, we look for new diving areas closer to home. We soon realise that, within a few hours journey, there are dive sites to go to.
Unlocking New Worlds
As mentioned before, diving will allow you to explore a whole new world. In fact, it will unlock a series of new worlds as you develop as a diver. Scuba diving allows you to see into the past with the exploration of shipwrecks from hundreds of years ago such as the SS Carnatic which sank in 1869 in the Red Sea. Or if more recent ships are your thing, seeing the gigantic wreck of SS Thistlegorm is a must. With over 120 metres of wreck and multiple levels to view its cargo, this shipwreck is loved by divers all over the globe. Perhaps you’re less interested in wrecks and more with marine life. The main attractions will be places like the Red Sea, Great Barrier reef, Mexico and the Caribbean. With crystal clear warm waters and a plethora of life settled on coral reefs for miles upon miles, you can easily spend hundreds of dives and still not be bored. As it stands scientists believe that there is still 60 to 80 percent of species yet to be discovered!
Maybe you’re the adventurous type and there is something pulling you towards exploration and discovery? Then you may naturally head towards the cave diving world or even the technical diving world, both requiring more training and experience but with commitment easily achieved. These two worlds, cave and “tec”, allow divers to go into places that have yet been unseen by humans or to dive deeper and for longer. All this is another reason why scuba diving is fun; you can re-invent yourself as a diver over and over again. Moving from one discipline to another, a great specialty divers often get into is underwater photography/videography. Imagine coming back from a dive and showing friends and family what you seen! I’m sure it would make them want to get into the water!
Freedom
When we say we are off for a dive people often imagine, with all the equipment we carry, that it’s hard work. In truth, that couldn’t be further from reality! The famous, early diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau once said; “From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free”. And right he was, as soon as divers descend the weight of gravity and their equipment disappears, leaving the diver in a state almost like flying. Doesn’t scuba diving sound fun now? Divers, once underwater, experience freedom like they have never felt before. We can move in all directions, gliding effortlessly over vast corals or through the interior of shipwrecks without setting a foot on the decking. A freedom of movement is not the only benefit of scuba diving but also the release of stress it can be for the mind. Diving, for some, is a form of “focused meditation”, meaning when we are underwater all the worries of the world are left at the surface, and we are in the moment and relaxed.
With scuba diving having near to no joint impact, having the freedom of movement and being weightless, diving has the benefit of allowing those with some medical difficulties to get into the water. In some cases, those with a physical condition, it can reduce pain the individual feels. Even more so those with mobility limitations, such as in wheelchairs, underwater they look and feel like just another diver creating everlasting moments in their lives.
Community
It goes without saying that the community side of diving is a big attraction, it’s knowledgeable, exciting and engaging. Half the fun of diving is finishing the dive, sitting around a table with friends, maybe with a beer or two, and talking about all the amazing things you saw, or did, over the day of diving. The diving community is made up by thousands of enthusiastic dive clubs based all over the globe. Clubs are great because what they enable is the meeting of likeminded individuals of varying backgrounds. The conversations, naturally, revolve around diving, sharing knowledge, experiences, equipment ideas, techniques etc. But ultimately so you have lots of available dive buddies to go and get in the water with and have a good laugh!
All dive clubs will have a mix of divers at all levels so when you first join, you’ll never feel left out, you’ll have joined an inclusive and passionate group of people that all love everything about diving. The diversity of members within clubs is remarkable and friendships are formed between people that would have otherwise never have met.
What a community also enables is the continuation of scuba diving all over the globe, as when divers travel then return home to tell the tales of their trips, it only inspires more of us to go and visit. Meaning even the smallest dive centres in the far corners of the world can remain open, bringing work to the local communities and show casing wonders that perhaps we would all miss.
Personal Growth
Personal growth is a massive reason why scuba diving is fun. In the diving world there are lots of different elements to becoming a good diver, these cover things like the practical tasks/skills, theoretical components to learn and the psychological aspect. At the beginning, things like the skills and theory; you’ll learn on courses as you start and will continue to all the way through your diving journey. This will slowly grow you into a more confident and robust diver, meaning you have the knowledge and experience to start jumping on more challenging dives. Now the psychological side of diving is the fun part, the secret is no one can teach it. Rather, instructors and mentors can only give you the tools to help guide you to developing a thinking-divers mindset. This is something where you instinctively know what’s happening around you above and below the water, you can pre-empt potentially problematic situations and resolve them. This is something that is not taught on early courses but something to be mindful of and try to develop. Looping back into the community section, all divers want to make sure everyone is OK and having a good time.
The great thing is that all these learning points and experience you gain from the diving world will spill into your day to day lives. You will be able to approach things from a different angle and manage situations or groups of people in a more efficient way.
Giving Back
Becoming a scuba diver is an amazing privilege, being able to truly explore some of the best places earth has to offer. So, what is really important is that we remember to give back when we can. As Scuba divers, we have already established that we give back to local communities when we travel, through job creation and spending money in local communities. Thankfully not everyway to give back involves money! And that makes scuba diving a lot of fun, too. As we have already discussed, the underwater world is a mysterious, gigantic and magnificent world; and it really is! However, lots of diving spots are being damaged by a number of factors, mainly due to litter in the ocean. What we can do as divers is to simply pick up the litter during our dives and dispose of it correctly at the surface. And when on the shore waiting for our next dives is to have a little walk around to ensure nothing will end up in the ocean unnecessarily. What you will be doing is lengthening the beauty of the ocean for all future divers who are yet to experience what you hopefully will be!
PADI, a leading dive organisation, has great material and offers a lot of support to both divers and non-divers in how promote greater awareness for our oceans and what we can do to help. For more information, please see PADI’s Project Aware site.
Improvement in Physical Fitness
To enable you to enjoy the wonders of the underwater world we do need to carry some equipment with us. Out of the water this can be heavy, and you may need to walk to dive sites carrying your equipment. Although at the time you are not thinking about what you are doing because you will be excited and focussed on the dive ahead, what you are actually doing is some exercise. A great reason why SCUBA diving is fun is that you will be burning those calories in a fun and enjoyable way. When exercise is mentioned here, it is not strenuous and not very hard but there none the less. Examples include loading the car with equipment, carrying the equipment, climbing ladders on the boats and of course swimming around underwater. All these things add up over the day, or days, and over time you will start to notice an improvement in fitness.
This in turn creates a healthier and stronger body, meaning you can participate in more challenging dives all over the globe. Furthermore, much like personal growth, what we gain here from diving will spill into our day to day lives making some tasks a little easier to do. Certainly, will make moving furniture easier for a start!
To Finish
This blog only scratches at the surface for all the reasons why SCUBA diving is fun. Put simply there are more reasons to go SCUBA diving than there is not to go diving! In addition, scuba diving is really not hard, so why not give it a try? What you hopefully can take away with you is that you now know some of the endless possibilities of diving and where it can take you. How you can develop yourself as an individual and find your area of interest in the diving world and go for it. You know of the amazing diving community and its inclusiveness, encouraging nature and friendliness to all divers. The tremendous benefits that diving has on the body and mind. And lastly, that who we are and what we do can have a big, positive, impact on the world.
